'Tis the season to be jolly ... so I'm in search of a party. With astonishing timing, an email lands telling me about Edinburgh's Christmas Cocktail Trail of festive beverages in the city's best bars. One is in the city's newest boutique hotel, evocatively named Tigerlily, which also has a nightclub, Lulu's, in the basement. That's me sorted.

The city's aglow with lights when I arrive, the castle illuminated from beneath and quite stunning in the dark evening sky.

"Can I help you?" asks a girl in black with an earpiece and a clipboard, as I ascend Tigerlily's steps. I feel as if I'm blagging my way backstage at a rock concert. She whisks me through a buzzing bar to reception. From here, I can see another bar and the restaurant - two bars better than one, I think.

A nice Australian girl takes me up to my room via a staircase carpeted in pink and orange with a huge suspended glitterball. So far, so disco. I muster all the seasonal goodwill I can before entering the room - sometimes boutique hotels are a triumph of style over substance - but it's really well designed. From the sleek dimmer switches to the black and turquoise flock easy chairs. From a flatscreen TV doubling up as room divider since it swivels at the foot of the bed, to a spacious wetroom furnished with a perfect, simple, cork stool. A quick go on the hair straighteners (now there's a first), and I'm ready to rock.

Down in the lobby I bag two super-sized tweedy seats by the fire just as my friend Kari shows up. "Order a Limelight, they're amazing," she purrs with authority. "It's champagne and lime and something ..." She checked this place out as soon as it opened. I opt for a whisky-based Edinburgh Vibe - it's the Cocktail Trail special.

"This is a lovely place to be - it's so beautiful," Kari says, before sticking the pink plastic dagger in, "but it's not somewhere to come for a meal." She's had a lacklustre lunch here with slow service. Too late, I say, slurping my fruity potion, we're booked into the restaurant for dinner then heading down to Lulu's.

The restaurant's packed, but Tigerlily rises to the challenge: service is spot-on. Only my starter, a gloopy flavourless vegetable laksa, disappoints. Kari's Inverawe smoked salmon disappears fast off the plate, but so do mains of Angus beef fillet with horseradish mash and a sublime special of roast venison with perfect vegetables. Can't help thinking that the softly lit and zen-like surroundings deserve a more imaginative soundtrack than a thump-thump bassline.

Replete, we scamper down to Lulu's (reached via a lift from the hotel but it also has a street entrance). More tactile cleverness here with rich colours, crushed velvet cushions and curtains of chains to divide seating areas. Soon we're giggling on the illuminated dancefloor. "Doesn't it just make you want to do this?" she asks, flinging one arm up in the air Travolta-style.

Revellers are reeling in but I'm bushed. In my room, a sheepskin mat has been placed by the turned-down bed. Bed's heaven, so when my wake-up call doesn't materialise it's nothing short of a miracle that I leave what is, in my opinion, the Best Hotel Bed of 2006. Forget partying, come here to catch up on some sleep.